


The Long Way Home

by ThreeWhiskeyLunch



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Gift Fic, Post-War, Spectre Williams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 02:43:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13515033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreeWhiskeyLunch/pseuds/ThreeWhiskeyLunch
Summary: Three years after the end of the Reaper War, Ashley is still searching for the missing Commander Shepard. A chance sighting on Tuchanka renews her hopes of finding her.





	The Long Way Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Settiai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/gifts).



> This is a gift fic for the Holiday Harbinger.

There are certain things she wishes she could ask Shepard about, now that it’s too late. How she managed to handle the stresses of diplomacy, most importantly. How she’d negotiated between salarian and krogan with such unstoppable grace and unrelenting will. How she hadn’t just given up when each race had been so obtuse and bullheaded. Or how she’d handled Admiral Hackett assuring that each task assigned would be done to his exacting specifications—and then they were. Or even just simply how she’d somehow talk to all her crew members and still have time for herself (had she had time for herself?).

The war is won. Years have passed. The urgency of battle is gone. And yet Ashley Williams feels as if somehow it still continues. Perhaps because the aftermath has been so devastating; so many dead, so much infrastructure destroyed. Always there are a thousand things to do and never enough time to get any of them done.

She never expected that being a Spectre would divide her loyalties. Her desire to remain on Earth, to rebuild with her own kind, ease the suffering of her own people is at odds with the oath she took in front of the Council to protect and serve no matter the species, no matter the planet. The council runs her as hard as they can. She can’t count the cities, the planets she’s been to in the last year, the politicians she’s (tried not to yell at) talked to, the nutrient paste she’s eaten because there’s been nothing else. She’s bone-weary and unable to stop.

Ashley wishes beyond anything that Shepard was around to ask advice.

But Commander Jane Shepard has disappeared. Three months after waking from a coma (that itself had lasted five months), she vanished from the hospital as if into thin air. Whisked away by (Ashley can only guess, since all security footage had been suspiciously wiped clean) Garrus and possibly that ex-Cerberus operative, Miranda Lawson. Perhaps a few others had been in on it as well.

Ashley had not been in on it.

This fact alone both horrifies and shames her. That Shepard didn’t trust her enough, even after their discussions on what had happened between them. Perhaps Shepard had never believed that Ashley was truly on her side. Perhaps she thought Ashley was watching for any sign that Cerberus still had its hooks in her. It’s simple speculation. Ashley has no proof of what Shepard had been thinking. But considering how she disappeared, and the lack of communication since, she can only assume the worst.

Thinking about it, Ashley feels a burn of anger in the back of her throat, wondering what else she could have done, could have said to make the commander believe that Ashley had put the past behind them.

And then she feels the deep pang of regret and heartsick longing. There had been so many things left unsaid. Things Ashley deeply wishes she would have had the courage to admit. How much she admired Shepard. How she held her up as a personal example of grace under pressure.

How much she lov—

But no.

The timing had never been right for that. For even broaching the possibility.

(And there had been Garrus.)

That Garrus had turned up on Palaven in service to his primarch was a bit of a surprise. His security level was high enough that it was difficult to keep tabs on him even with her Spectre status, but that didn’t keep her from trying. In the three years since Shepard had disappeared, she’d never found a single clue that would lead her back to the Commander.

**Tuchanka**

Negotiations with the krogan leave her exhausted. Wrex and Bakara are a force to be reckoned with and she sees now what perhaps Shepard had seen all those years ago. In hindsight, Ashley has enough sense of self to recognize what was blatantly obvious back on Virmire—that Wrex only wanted what anyone in his place would have wanted: self-determination for his people. Had she been in the same place, she’s certain she would have done the same, or worse. Bakara’s gentling influence over Wrex does nothing to undermine their need for a new world where they can raise their children, unencumbered by an environment they had no hand in making, yet suffer with daily. A healthy planet where they can have a new start is all they ask. It seems so simple, and yet political forces work against them, even with a galaxy so vast, so empty, and yet so occupied.

She doesn’t pretend to understand why the council chose to send her, but she takes up Shepard’s mantle of champion to the krogan. Out of honor to her former Commander. As atonement for the blinders she once wore.

To clear her head, she meanders through the marketplace, looking for nothing in particular beyond the need to be lost in a crowd. If that were possible as a human among krogan. Few know her here and of that she’s glad. Being anonymous, even for an hour, with no demands on her other than a vendor’s invitation to have a look at a new gun mod (too battered) or blackmarket batarian whiskey (too expensive) might be enough to chase the cobwebs from her brain. This is her hope, at any rate.

She’s distracted enough that when she sees the flash of red from the corner of her eye, it doesn’t register. But it niggles away at her thoughts in the back of her head, worrying at her like a splinter in her finger might prick at her nerve endings. When it happens again—a flash of red hair shifting in the hazy sunlight—it’s enough to jar into her consciousness, to make her freeze in place and turn a full circle, searching for that which her brain tells her is impossible to find. She’s jostled by several krogan, who mutter at her about blocking the path and send her back several steps. She turns again, going over every vendor’s kiosk, every vehicle, willing every krogan who blocks her view to move. But the marketplace is too crowded for any sort of satisfaction. Surveying the area again, she finds a tank and moves to it, climbing up its tires and pulling herself up its frame until she’s standing on top and can see the whole of the place. She turns again, searching methodically each flash of color her eyes seize on in the sea of gray and muted tones.

After several minutes she nearly gives up, feeling somewhat foolish up above the crowd. A krogan taunts her from below on being a puny human and she closes her eyes and thinks it’s probably true, in the grand scheme of things. She is small and insignificant in the face of everything that’s happened and she’ll never live up to anyone’s expectations, especially her own. She shakes her head, and opens her eyes, telling herself to stop seeing ghosts.

The flash happens again, further away and so fleeting that Ashley has to wonder she isn’t hallucinating. She almost doesn’t look, but the call is too strong.

“Shepard?”

Her soft words are lost to anyone but herself, lost in the noise of a hundred individuals busy in their own lives. She steps forward to the front of the tank, following the blotch of unmistakable red hair with her eyes as the woman moves through the crowd. The cut is longer than she used to wear it, but it still sways as it always had, like long, silky grass moving in a soft breeze. Ashley has imagined so many times running her fingers through that hair.

“Shepard?”

She holds her breath, willing the woman to turn, but all she can see is her back. The woman bends down, extending her hand out to a krogan youngling and picks them up, settling them on her hip like she’s done it a thousand times. The youngling snuggles in willingly, a hand resting on her arm. They say something that makes the woman turn then and look behind, down toward the ground where another youngling stands. Ashley’s heart hammers in her chest as she watches Shepard hold out her other hand and speak, a smile curling her lips. The krogan child takes her hand and then Shepard turns and walks away.

“Shepard!”

Ashley knows she has a voice on her. She’s used it many times to rouse troops, to call to battle against Reapers. She knows her voice carries over the crowded market. But the woman doesn’t so much as falter, carrying the youngling and guiding the other as they leave the crowded market and step out into the street.

“Shepard!”

Ashley jumps and runs, shoving through immovable krogan determined not to be bent to the will of one small human. She growls in frustration, dodging around bodies, banging into hard armor. She leaps over a cart of scrap, ignoring a shouted obscenity. She puts on speed when she has a chance, skidding around a kiosk and then she breaks free, stumbling out onto the street, panting as she looks both ways up and down to find only the emptiness of crumbling buildings. She turns a circle, again and again and feels an utter fool.

Shepard is gone.

~~~~~

Her ship has become her home and she retreats there now, determined to uncover what must have been right in front of her face. Confronting Wrex would be pointless. If he’s been hiding her this entire time (and she has no doubt that he has), the last thing he would ever do is admit to it. Loyalty to Shepard goes above and beyond whatever else might come in its path. She knows this personally, had thought she had proved it countless times. She doesn’t bother to remove her armor, sitting at the console in her bedroom and typing madly, focusing all her attention on Garrus and Wrex and any communication between them she can access (she has never attempted to cull any information about Liara, knowing the Shadow Broker has ways and means beyond even that of being a Spectre). The search will probably be fruitless, but she doesn't feel she's throwing darts in the dark anymore. _Shepard is on Tuchanka._ She has to start somewhere.

Satisfied the computer is performing its task, she finally removes her armor and heads to the shower, anxious to remove the grit of Tuchanka and to ponder what’s happened with only the sound of water to fill her ears. She finds no answers under the water, only more questions. But she feels better for being clean at least, which counts as a win considering.

When she returns to the computer, she finds a message waiting for her, the green light flashing with patient insistence. There is no sender, only an accusing blank space. The message is a simple navigation point and time given in local. She checks her watch. She has a little under an hour to get there.

She finds herself at the door to an otherwise nondescript compound, a wall of gray steel and concrete guarding against the street, and a door with nothing to speak of it beyond simply being a door. There is nothing to allow her to announce her presence, so she knocks. She doesn’t have long to wait. A small window pops open at eye level for a krogan and a female looks out, and then down when she realizes who is on the other side.

“You are Major Ashley Williams? The Spectre?” The female asks in a rumbling voice.

“Yes.”

The window snaps shut and a bolt is thrown on the other side of the door. Inside she can see a courtyard and doors beyond. She steps inside and the door is resealed. “Follow me.” The krogan turns and walks away without a backward glance and Ashley follows, feeling like a schoolgirl on the heels of a teacher. What is it about krogan that always makes her feel patronized? She shakes it off, it’s baggage from her past, she knows this. She is so much more than she had been before, and most of it because of one woman.

The krogan leads her through another door and down a hall. Inside she can hear the sounds of home life. Krogan younglings calling, the clatter of dishes, a conversation carried on in the low undertones of female krogan. Her guide stops at another door, open this time, and nods her head for Ashley to go inside.

What she sees at the threshold stops her, makes her head spin so that she has to hold onto the door frame for stability. Shepard sits on the floor, several younglings surrounding her. They’re building a tower using brightly colored resin blocks, the children chattering excitedly and Shepard laughing as it all comes tumbling down, the blocks scattering around them. It’s then Shepard notices Ashley at the door and her smile lessens, but doesn’t disappear altogether. She stands and says something to them all—Ashley can hear nothing beyond the rushing of blood in her ears—and they dance away out of the room through another door, tumbling over each other like a passel of jackrabbits.

Two younglings remain, picking up the toys and placing them in a bin. They eye her curiously and when they’re done, come to stand next to Shepard as if to guard her, one wrapping a hand around Shepard’s leg and hanging on. All the while Shepard and Ashley regard each other across the room, measuring each other. Ashley’s heart thuds heavy in her chest, even as she tries (and probably fails) to keep her breathing slow and steady.

She wants to scream.

Shepard places a hand on the krogan child attached to her leg, looking down and smiling. “This is Mordin,” she says with a sad smile and Ashley’s heart nearly breaks from remembering the sacrifice of the youngling’s namesake. “And this is her brother Strarkan.”

She finally looks away to meet the intense gaze of the children. “Hello.”

Mordin hugs tighter to Shepard’s leg, suddenly shy when Ashley acknowledges her. But Strarkan places his fists on his hips and juts his chin out. “Did you help Shepard take down the Reapers?” he asks.

“I did.”

“Was it a glorious battle?”

She would never have considered it as such. It had been awful. So many had died. So much destruction had rained down on so many planets. And yet, despite it all, they had won. (Shepard had won it for them.) And that was nothing if not glorious. So she says, “Yes.”

He nods, as if Ashley has passed a test only a three year old krogan could imagine, and then reaches his hand out and takes Mordin’s. “Come on. I’m hungry.” They toddle off together, out the door hand-in-hand.

Which just leaves the two of them.

“I’m sorry,” Shepard says. She doesn’t look away, doesn’t try to hide the sorrow in her eyes. Ashley has known Shepard a long time (thought she knew her) and has never known her to lie. She has no reason to believe Shepard isn’t sincere in her apology. But she didn’t come here for that; she came for an explanation. She grits her teeth and hardens her heart. Just because the woman across the room is the great Commander Jane Shepard doesn’t mean a simple apology (for what, exactly, Ashley doesn’t even know) will wipe the slate clean.

Ashley crosses her arms, frozen in place at the door. Moving forward feels like capitulation, giving up ground to the enemy army. She leans back, schooling her features as best she can, even though a volcano is building inside her gut, threatening to explode through the smallest fissure in her already weakened emotions.

“For what?”

Shepard waves her hands, flailing at the air. She seems lost for words, her mouth opening and closing several times. “For everything,” she finally says and Ashley shakes her head, denying her the blanket apology the other woman so obviously wants to get away with.

“No.”

“No?”

She advances into the room, full of righteous anger. “You disappear for three years, Shepard. _Three. Years._ ” She ticks off on her fingers, “Garrus knows where you are. Wrex knows where you are. That Cerberus bitch probably knows where you are. I’m guessing Tali. Liara. Who else? _Hackett?_ I’m beginning to suspect half the galaxy knows where you’ve been, Shepard. Everyone but _me_. Which, fine. That’s your right. But I thought we had trust between us. I thought we had put Cerberus behind us. But I guess there’s nothing I could say or do to convince you—”

“What? Ashley! That’s not true!”

“You snuck off in the middle of the night! Security footage was wiped clean. No one knew where you were, Shepard. _I_ didn’t know where you were until today. And that was only by accident, and most certainly not because I didn’t try to find you. What else is there for me to assume but that you don’t trust me?”

“I—Oh...Ashley.” Shepard’s shoulders sag just barely, but enough for Ashley to see. If she hadn’t been trained to look for such things, it never would have registered. It is, on Shepard, a barely perceptible admission of defeat.

It curdles Ashley’s blood. She sneers and turns on her heel. “I never should have come,” she mutters, stepping just beyond the door into the hall. She’ll leave, she decides, and never come back to Tuchanka. To hell with the Council.

“I saw you,” Shepard says, her quiet voice the only sound in the room beyond the crunch of Ashley’s boots. “In the market. I saw you, before, I think, you saw me. I nearly…” Ashley stops, staring at the crumbling wall. “I nearly came over to you. I stopped myself because, well. I...didn’t know what to say. There’s been so much hurt between us. And I’m a coward. There’s no other way to say it. I didn’t want to know how mad you were at me. There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by that I haven’t missed you. I’ve written hundreds of messages to you and haven’t sent any. Three years is a long time to regret anything, but please know, I regret not telling you where I was going.”

“So, why...?”

Shepard’s voice draws nearer, her footsteps soft on the concrete floor. She sighs and stops somewhere behind her. “I knew you...I saw the looks you gave me when you thought I wasn’t looking. Garrus saw too. Garrus said I should give you the chance. To say yes, or no. Or whatever. But I...we were at war. And if I died, if something were to happen to me, I didn’t want you to go through that...my death. _Again_. So I said nothing. I did nothing. And after the war, I talked myself out of it. Told myself you’d never want...that. Garrus was quite angry with me.”

All the blood drains from her head (from her entire body), seems to pool in her feet so they feel made of lead. Shepard’s words register viscerally, in every cell of her body but her brain. Her thoughts race, trying to catch up, stuttering over words and reality in the same way it had that one time she’d had a shot of ryncol.

“You never...you never gave me the option. You never let me decide,” Ashley whispers. Her hands are tight fists, aching with the pressure she exerts over her own power of wills.

“No. I didn’t. And I wouldn’t change that now. I still think, with everything that had happened, with what was going on in the galaxy, I would never put you in the position of having to choose, knowing that my time could have been up at any minute. I mean...Jesus, Ashley. I fought a goddamn Reaper on foot. I dove to the bottom of an ocean to solve the mystery of leviathan. Every mission we went on could have been my last. I broke your heart working with Cerberus. I couldn’t do it again.”

“Shepard.” She chokes on the word, strangled by anger and sorrow and shock.

“I know it’s too late. I know I’ve messed up beyond anything you might be willing to forgive. But know this. I don’t have many regrets. I’ve tried to make decisions based on the best information I had at the time. Tried to make the galaxy better. It hasn’t always worked. But I don’t know how to do things any differently. But I...I regret not telling you. When Garrus and Miranda and I were planning this. I should have told you. Ashley. You’ve never lost my trust. You’ve _always_ had my trust.”

“So then what? Why not tell me?”

“Because I love you, Ashley. I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you fighting off geth all alone, with nothing between them and you but a big rock and your own hard-headed determination. When you turned away from me on Horizon, I loved you. When you pointed your pistol at me on the Citadel, I loved you. When I fell through that fish tank and you came and rescued me? God, I loved you. And when I saw you in the market today, there was no question in my mind I still loved you. I thought maybe, just maybe, you had tracked me down. And dear God, that made me so happy. The hardest thing I’ve had to do was not turn around when I heard you call my name.”

She’s shaking (trembling) so hard, she doesn’t think she can even control herself. Fingernails dig into her palms, her throat tight with holding back the scream that threatens to cut the air like a glacier. She shakes her head. “No.”

She’s told Shepard ‘no’ thrice in her life and two of those has times have been within ten minutes of each other. She spins to find Shepard so surprisingly close she takes a half step back. It knocks her off balance in more ways than one. Shepard looks so calm and serene, as if she hadn’t just layed the biggest bombshell of Ashley’s life out at her feet (even considering Shepard’s resurrection). It’s not fair.

Shepard tips her head slightly, red hair swaying with the movement. This close Ashley can see the fine ridge of scars that run along her hairline, over her jaw, down her neck, disappearing into the collar of her shirt. She remembers how angry it had looked, back when Shepard was lying in the hospital bed. How frightened she had been for the woman’s life. How impotent she had felt standing at her bedside and not knowing how to fix it. She’d taken Shepard’s hand (it had been so cold) and willed her to wake from the coma that had entrapped her for months on end.

“What’s not fair?” Shepard asks and Ashley realizes she had spoken her thoughts out loud.

“You can’t just...just…Just like that. You can’t do that. Like nothing you say is ever wrong.”

“I don’t think that—”

“You can’t pacify me with... _that_. It doesn’t work that way, _Shepard_.”

“Okay. Tell me how it works instead,” Shepard crosses her arms, the small smile that curled her lips a moment ago now gone, beaten away by Ashley’s anger, to be replaced with nothing. The closed off look Shepard would wear when in front of the council, or (even worse) Udina. “Tell me what I should do. What I should say. Tell me how to fix this.”

The problem is she doesn’t know. Has she ever known? She’s caught in a trap of her own making. Wanting one thing. Getting another. Something much bigger than she’d ever have imagined. Something she’d dared never hope for, even though her dreams had betrayed her. “I don’t...I don’t know…” She shakes her head, stuck in the whirlpool of (self-righteous) anger and not knowing how to get out, what words will make the world tilt back on its correct axis.

Perhaps words aren’t the answer. Ashley has always been better at action than words.

She steps forward and takes Shepard’s face in her hands, pressing her forehead against the other woman’s. Her fingers tremble as she tries to find the right words, but nothing comes out except, “I am so _angry_ with you, Shepard.”

“I know.. I don’t blame you for anything. I just—” Shepard’s hands come to rest lightly on Ashley’s hips. “I hope one day you can forgive me.” She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, her body sagging slightly toward Ashley.

“So...You and Garrus? There’s nothing between you?”

Shepard shakes her head slightly. “He’s my best friend. That’s all there’s ever been. That’s all either of us have ever wanted.”

“Why did you send me that message?”

“I regretted immediately not stopping in the market.” Her voice is soft, but unwavering and Ashley doesn’t doubt for a moment that she’s telling the truth. “I wanted to see you. Even if it’s just to repair the friendship that I messed up. I knew you wouldn’t give up trying to find me,” she laughs softly. “You’re tenacious. Like no one I’ve ever known.” Shepard’s voice is thick with emotion as she says, “And I...Ash, I’ve _missed_ you.”

“Shepard,” Ashley whispers and kisses her, gently at first and then Shepard’s surprise turns to need and her arms wrap firmly around Ashley’s waist. She’s willing and pliant and so, so soft. She breaks the kiss with a gasp, “I’ve missed you too.”

“Okay,” Shepard breathes. She tightens her grip around Ashley’s waist. “If this...if I’m what you want, you have me.” She kisses the corner of Ashley’s mouth. “My soul.” She kisses the other corner, her nose brushing softly on Ashley’s cheek. “My heart. They belong to you. They always have. Before I even knew you, they were yours.”

Ashley chokes down a sob, pressing as close as she can. “ _Jane_.” Shepard’s face is still framed in her palms. She tips her head back and studies the woman’s face. The years, the battles, the stress haven’t been kind. But all Ashley sees is beauty and grace and her heart expands. She takes a deep breath and nods. Yes, she wants this. She can’t count the years she’s wanted this: Shepard in her arms, her body warm and alive and real under her fingers.

The woman grins, white teeth showing, her eyes wrinkling at the corners. “Okay.” She kisses her again and it’s full of a sort of promise that takes Ashley’s breath away.

Finally Shepard takes a breath and steps back, her hand reaching down to take Ashley’s in her own. Her grip is warm and strong, her thumb brushing the back of Ashley’s hand. “Come on. I want you to meet my kids.” She smiles and there is nothing Ashley can do to resist.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
